Santa rescue, lighting ceremony Friday will start the holiday season in Lawrence

“Dear Santa: Children’s Christmas Letters and Wish Lists, 1870-1920” (Chronicle Books; $14.95) contains gift requests published in newspapers around the world, with letters as mournful as “mama says that Santa Claus does not come to poor people” and “I am afraid you may forget me, like last year.” The scale of the desired gifts ranged from “some little trifle to make our hearts glad” to “the whole earth.” Santa’s finances and his reindeers’ health were among the writers’ concerns, as well as his safety while navigating narrow chimneys and the accuracy of his lists of addresses and children’s names and ages. “Letters to Santa Claus” (Indiana University Press; $16) reproduces about 250 messages from the 1930s, which belong to the Santa Claus Museum & Village in Santa Claus, Ind.Tape temporarily covers Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer’s brand-new nose, which will shine at the 2015 Santa Claus Parade in Winnipeg on Saturday. (Sara Calnek/CBC) JCI Winnipeg, which has maintained the parade’s iconic Santa float for more than 50 years, is refurbishing it with the help of landscape ecologist and designer Samantha Braun. “There’s some duct tape around Rudolph’s nose; he just had a nose job,” Natasha Fisher, JCI Winnipeg’s 2015 chapter president, told CBC News on Thursday morning. “But it is going to be all ready for Saturday, so you’re going to see Rudolph’s nose — bigger, brighter and redder — coming down Portage Avenue. People are not going to miss it.” “Last year there was kind of a deep blue sparkly sheeting over a majority of it and a lot of silver tinsel, and we removed all of that and kind of really simplified it and cleaned it up and put a bit of a more modern take on it,” Fisher said. They also confided secrets: “mama cries at night when she thinks we are asleep, because she has no money.” One prisoner in Indiana, hoping to be released in time for Christmas, asked Santa for a lawyer and an appeal bond.

Alex Palmer, a journalist living in Brooklyn, explores a family scandal in “The Santa Claus Man: The Rise and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man and the Invention of Christmas in New York” (Lyons Press/Rowman & Littlefield; $25.95). A 10-year-old girl named Patricia was among hundreds who obliged: “My brothers are only seven and they believe in Santa Claus,” she wrote. “It’s not so bad on my sister and I because we don’t believe any more. The group had volunteers sort through unopened letters to Santa that had ended up at post offices and tried to persuade philanthropists to buy the requested gifts. In honour of the partnership, the Raptors built a box replicating the one seen in Drake’s video, and invited fans to attempt their best impressions as part of “Drake Night.” The pair struck up the friendship on social media after Kelly defended Drake during a Twitter feud with Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill. Take this recent letter from a local mother: “I work full time as a case manager for families who are homeless and living in shelters, and despite my wages my family is still at the poverty level,” she wrote to Globe Santa. “I often am upset and feel like a disappointment to my children because I have no funds for even the smallest extra expenses. “I do not want my children to suffer because I had too much pride to ask,” she added. “They are sweet boys filled with tons of love in their hearts.” Today, Globe Santa kicks off its 60th year soliciting donations from the public to fill the Christmas lists of thousands of children who approach the season anticipating miracles, even as their parents too often have a sense of dread.

He planned to build a white marble headquarters in Manhattan, with the façade showing images of “Santa Clauses from all the countries of the world.” It is not clear how many Christmas presents the association sent out, nor is it certain that the children were telling the truth in the descriptions of their families’ dire needs. The original mission and the pleas for help have echoed down through the years as Globe Santa has answered letters and calls from some 1.2 million families, delivering holiday gifts to about 2.9 million children. All donations go directly to support Globe Santa, a charity that is strengthened by individuals, families, and organizations that choose to assist their neighbors by joining in this unique holiday tradition. “Globe Santa speaks to the community commitment that the Globe and its readers share,” said Linda Pizzuti Henry, the Globe’s managing director. “Our mission with this program is to deliver joy to needy local children at this special time of the year, and our readers and our customers make this possible with their generous contributions, support, and heartfelt letters.” When the Globe was moving to fill its first sleigh with presents in 1956, Santa had a prominent helper in John B. In fact, the original name of the program was the Mayor Hynes-Boston Globe Santa Claus Fund, a successor to the 46-year-old Santa Fund of the Boston Post, which had ceased publication earlier that year. He set up shop at the Globe offices one day and collected about $6,000 in donations at a time when large numbers of people were stopping by or sending in a dollar or two to help out.

Palmer said in an interview that he found no evidence his forebear regretted deceiving generous people during holiday seasons: “He convinced himself that he was doing good.” “A Token of Elegance: Cigarette Holders in Vogue” (Officina Libraria/ACC Distribution; $50), by the historians Martin Barnes Lorber and Rebecca McNamara, analyzes about 140 holders that Carolyn Hsu-Balcer has acquired in the past two decades. She owns silver and gold pieces studded with diamonds, plastic souvenirs from restaurants and tubes that sprout miniature sculptures of snakes, dragons, a monkey admiring itself in a mirror and a mermaid engulfed in smoke. She avoids items that show signs of wear and tear, although she made an exception for a faintly chewed tube of amber, blue enamel and gold that belonged to Princess Margaret. McComb Sinclair II inherited his collection of about 1,000 cigar bands, which a Philadelphia teenager named Hugh Augustus Wilson tucked into an album around 1900. Sinclair has reproduced the album pages in “Box of Cigar Bands” (Schiffer Publishing; $34.99) and analyzed the history of lithographed paper strips that were wrapped around cigar tips.

Wilson eventually outgrew the hobby (he left a few blank pages in the album), but for part of his boyhood, the collection most likely provided a kind of virtual escape. “He was looking at the world through the eyes of the people who were walking down the street,” tossing aside bits of multicultural lithography, Mr.